Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation

[Edwin-S]

Title: Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)

Genre: Family, Fantasy, Comedy, Animation

Director: Genndy Tartakovsky

Cast: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, Keegan-Michael Key, Molly Shannon, Fran Drescher, Kathryn Hahn, Jim Gaffigan, Mel Brooks, Asher Blinkoff, Sadie Sandler, Genndy Tartakovsky, Chrissy Teigen, Alison Hammond, Joe Whyte, Aaron LaPlante, Michelle Murdocca, Joyce Arrastia, Sunny Sandler, Tara Strong, Libby Thomas Dickey, Patrick Harpin, Craig Kellman, Jaime Camil, Joe Jonas, Chris Parnell, Fred Tatasciore, Kari Wahlgren, Brian T. Delaney, Robin Atkin Downes, Jessica Gee-George, Grant George, Todd Haberkorn, Rif Hutton, Lex Lang, Mona Marshall, Andrew Morgado, Michelle Ruff, Joseph Sanfelippo, Keith Silverstein, Kirk Thornton, Amanda Troop, Audrey Wasilewski, Debra Wilson, Michael-Leon Wooley

Release: 2018-06-30

Runtime: 97

Plot: Dracula, Mavis, Johnny and the rest of the Drac Pack take a vacation on a luxury Monster Cruise Ship, where Dracula falls in love with the ship's captain, Ericka, who's secretly a descendant of Abraham Van Helsing, the notorious monster slayer.

Looks like nobody had an interest to open a thread on this film, even though it opened at number 1 on the opening weekend, easily crushing "Skyscraper".

I finally saw it a couple of days ago. I'd say it that it falls between the First and the Second one in quality. This third installment was definitely more of an animator's film than the previous two. The story was written by Genndy Tartakovsky ( the Director) and another person. I think the story itself isn't as coherent as the first two but visually and gag-wise it was a more interesting film than HT2, so that is why I feel it was better than HT2.

There were a number of references in the film including one to Jessica Rabbit and the Indiana Jones series of films. The fish servers on the cruise ship kept reminding me of something, but I couldn't quite place what they may have been referencing.

There was one character sequence that felt like a lift from Moana. I couldn't help but keep thinking that they had done it better in Moana.

The 3D seemed pretty good depth-wise. I didn't notice pop-out but I'm not very sensitive to pop-out. It has to be something really aggressive for me to notice it.

All-in-all I had few good laughs, but the audience I saw it with didn't seem all that responsive to it so I found myself chuckling to it more than laughing. The quality is pretty consistent with the first two.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I just saw HT3. While many of the gags are amusing, the plot and settings are a lot more contrived than the ones in HT1 and HT2.

Settings: In HT1, Dracula has good reason for building a hotel. Between cheap zombie slave labor, accumulated wealth, and income from vacationing monsters, it is reasonable to assume that he can finance it. HT2 reuses that setting and throws in some standard suburban ones. But in HT3,

Spoiler

we have an enormous cruise ship, staffed by fish-headed creatures that would scare human vacationers away. It travels to underwater monster-oriented attractions that would be enormously difficult and expensive to construct. Without massive human financing, where does the money and construction labor for this come from?

Plot:

Spoiler

We're supposed to believe that the antagonists in HT3 wander around the ocean full-time, waiting for monsters to book a cruise. This is an incredibly inefficient way of doing things. Even if the antagonists do not know about the hotel, why are they not searching the greater Transylvania area?

 

[Johnny Angell]

I bit the bullit on this movie and bought tickets to a Cinemark theater to see this movie in 3D. Our only AMC did not show it at all in 3D and I have A-List with AMC, so it was hard spending that money.

Got to the theater and it was closed due to power failure. It didn’t just happen before we got there. A storm the previous night had caused the power failure. I had reserved the tickets online the previous day. Cinemark had plenty of time to notify ticket holders via email, but do they? Nooooo! 20’ drive one way, a lot of our time wasted.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Cinemark had plenty of time to notify ticket holders via email, but do they? Nooooo! 20’ drive one way, a lot of our time wasted.

So what did they give you for the inconvenience?

 

[Johnny Angell]

So what did they give you for the inconvenience?

My money back.

 

[Edwin-S]

I just saw HT3. While many of the gags are amusing, the plot and settings are a lot more contrived than the ones in HT1 and HT2.

Settings: In HT1, Dracula has good reason for building a hotel. Between cheap zombie slave labor, accumulated wealth, and income from vacationing monsters, it is reasonable to assume that he can finance it. HT2 reuses that setting and throws in some standard suburban ones. But in HT3,

Spoiler

we have an enormous cruise ship, staffed by fish-headed creatures that would scare human vacationers away. It travels to underwater monster-oriented attractions that would be enormously difficult and expensive to construct. Without massive human financing, where does the money and construction labor for this come from?

Plot:

Spoiler

We're supposed to believe that the antagonists in HT3 wander around the ocean full-time, waiting for monsters to book a cruise. This is an incredibly inefficient way of doing things. Even if the antagonists do not know about the hotel, why are they not searching the greater Transylvania area?

As far as the "attractions" go, all of them were either natural phenomenom or, in the case of Atlantis, a pre-existing "lost civilization" city. Where the money came from to convert Atlantis into what it was could be debated since they never bothered to explore that avenue. Although, it was an obvious reference to

Spoiler

Atlantic City

.

Like I said, to me, the film was more of an animator's film than a writer's film. There wasn't as much attention paid to story details because the setup existed mostly for sight gags and more expressive, cartoony character animation. At least one sequence of sight gags was a big homage to a certain cartoon director, whose name begins with the initials CJ.

As far as the cruise goes, they were not wandering around waiting for monsters to book the cruise. It is explicitly stated in the film that the cruise is the first of its kind. Yes, it is an incredibly convoluted way to go about doing things but it sort of makes a kind of bizarre sense when you see who is behind the operation and the mental state.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

20’ drive one way, a lot of our time wasted.

You drove 20 feet? How lazy are YOU???